Keeping abreast of all news is important, but it's quite impossible to do unless you make a conscious effort to break out of the current news cycle. If you fol

Keeping abreast of all news is important, but it's quite impossible to do unless you make a conscious effort to break out of the current news cycle. If you follow the news, you know there's a pandemic going on, and you know there's a wealth of information out there if you need it. But if you're skimming headlines on most aggregators, that's more or less all you get to know (with the notable exception of gripe-pieces/love-letters concerning the Trump administration). The cognitive overhead of filtering out all that redundant information, and the accompanying bullshit hot-takes by self-aggrandizing bloggers masquerading as journalists can be so exhausting that you risk giving up or developing tunnel-vision around it. It's hard not to remember to check for pandemic updates even if you do deliberately filter them out of the news - it directly effects you. I think this plug-in is a very good idea, and should make it easier to stay informed with respect to the bigger picture of the world. Missing a couple articles lamenting our circumstances isn't really going to save that many lives.